Editor's Study Finds Elitist 'Gap' Between
Journalists, Readers

by Julia Duin

Published 3/29/00

The nation's media are out of touch with the
average American because they live in expensive neighborhoods or have atypical lifestyles,
says a newspaper writer who has assembled a unique survey from the home addresses of 3,400
journalists.

"It's a very clear picture of people who live lives differently than their
customers," says Peter Brown, editor of the Sunday Insight section for the Orlando
(Fla.) Sentinel. "It doesn't make a difference if the guy who repairs your air
conditioner lives the life you do. But journalists' view of the world determines not just
how they cover a story, but what stories they cover."

He first became aware of the disconnect between journalists and the subjects of their
stories a decade ago when he was interviewing disenchanted suburbanites in the Detroit
area. Not only did the mass media not understand those people, the antipathy was mutual,
he said.

"What struck me was how much people disliked the news media and felt it
condescended to their views and lifestyles," he says.

For instance, when the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News brought in a consultant to rebuild its
circulation, she realized that in Dayton, many blue-collar workers carried lunch buckets
and ate Hamburger Helper. But the paper's food editor insisted on articles on salmon,
artichokes and asparagus.

"There is a gap," the consultant later said, "between what one could
refer to as normal people and journalists."

In preparation for a still-unpublished book on the topic, Mr. Brown thought up two
surveys. One was a questionnaire he developed with the help of Bethesda pollster Bill
Hamilton of 500 residents and 478 journalists in five American cities: Dayton, Ohio;
Tulsa, Okla.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Roanoke; and Chico/Redding, Calif.

The results revealed details about the nature of the people who gather and interpret
the news for the country's 1,489 daily newspapers and thus exert considerable influence on
American perceptions of reality.

In terms of salaries, whereas only 18 percent of the public earned $50,000 or more, 42
percent of the journalists in these medium-sized cities did. Thirty percent of the
journalists said they had to make $40,000 just to make ends meet, compared to 12 percent
of the public who said so.

"Journalists are now paid well enough in most markets that their peers are no
longer cops or teachers," says Mr. Brown, "but lawyers and politicians. They
shake few calloused hands in their off hours, and they don't have enough contact with
their audience when they are working. All that gives them a poor feel for the mass of
Americans."

Journalists, he found, are less likely to form families, have children, go to church,
do volunteer community service, own homes, put down roots or be the same age as others who
live in the communities where they work.

"How many members of the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch belong
to the American Legion or the Kiwanis or go to prayer breakfasts?" he asks.

The same disconnect goes for views on abortion (49 percent of the general public back
it compared to 82 percent of the journalists, according to a Los Angeles Times survey),
prayer in schools, belief in God, and the comparative youth of journalists compared to
other occupations. Whereas lawyers average 40 years of age and college professors 46,
journalists were concentrated between 25 and 44 years of age, he wrote.

A former Nieman Fellow and former chief political writer for Scripps Howard News
Service, Mr. Brown also discovered that journalists are overrepresented in elite
neighborhoods that house 26 percent of the nation's population, but are underrepresented
in more middle-class neighborhoods that are home to 48 percent of Americans.

Granted, he says, journalists live disproportionately in yuppified urban areas or very
close-in suburbs due to irregular hours and job demands necessitating proximity to the
office. What bothered him was what he perceived as disdainful media attitudes toward
suburbia and rural areas.

He came by this information with the help of Claritas Inc., an Alexandria, Va.-based
precision marketer, which he supplied with a database of 3,400 home addresses of
journalists in 13 news organizations: the Washington bureau of CNN, the San Diego
Union-Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Washington Post, USA Today and its parent
organization, Gannett News Service, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Denver Rocky
Mountain News, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of
Little Rock, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and the Southwest
Times Record of Fort Smith, Ark.

Together, they mapped out a profile of the residential patterns of American
journalists. With the help of a "cluster" name supplied by Claritas, Mr. Brown
placed most media employees into categories that suggested how they would see the world.

Journalists' ZIP codes revealed they mostly populated neighborhoods with cluster names
such as "money and brains" (two-earner couples, expensive condos or town homes,
few children, their own hot tub and a yen for jazz and sailing), but avoided rural areas
tagged "shotguns and pickups" (low real estate prices, families who eat
Wheaties, drink whiskey and go to auto races or bowling).

Unlike huge numbers of middle Americans, journalists rarely frequent yard sales, do
home remodeling, use coupons when they shop, or own Chevrolets. But they are more apt to
belong to country clubs, have maids, own Mercedes, play racquetball and trade stocks,
often because they have few or no children. Mr. Brown finds the latter to be a major
shortcoming.

"I was a single journalist" until he married in 1989, "and now I have
kids," he says. "It changes the way you view the world."

Journalists are "off the charts," he found, in neighborhoods such as
"urban gold coast" (college grads in high-rise apartments or condos who travel
first class on airplanes, attend live theater and watch ABC's "Nightline.") They
are 9 and 1/2 times more likely to live there than the average resident of the
metropolitan area they cover.

They are five times more likely to live in what he calls "Bohemian mix" -
singles-dominated upscale neighborhoods, whose residents roll their own marijuana joints,
play softball, spend at least $100 for a pair of jeans and subscribe to Rolling Stone
magazine.

For instance, 29 percent of the staff of The Washington Post lives in four upscale
suburban clusters, whereas 20 percent of The Post's market does. In four upscale urban
clusters, fully 45 percent of the paper's staff live in those neighborhoods - such as
Dupont Circle -compared to just 12 percent of the District's residents.

Mr. Brown did not survey the staff of The Washington Times.

This trend has alarmed observers such as Bill Kovach, curator for the Nieman Foundation
for Journalism.

"More and more, journalists are part of the elite, socially and economically, of
the country," he told Editor & Publisher magazine last month. "That gap
between them and the mass of citizens who rely on them and depend on them makes you
nervous."